Richard: A Novel
Encyclopedia
Richard: A Novel is a book by English author and journalist Ben Myers
about Richey Edwards, the former rhythm guitarist and co-lyricist of the Welsh alternative rock
band Manic Street Preachers
. Edwards - who suffered from depression, alcoholism
, anorexia
and self-harm
- disappeared on 1 February 1995 at the age of 27
and was declared officially presumed dead on 23 November 2008. Richard was published by Picador
and was released on 1 October 2010 (several days after the release of the tenth Manic Street Preachers studio album, Postcards From a Young Man
). It is Myers' second novel, and purports to be a fictionalised account of Richey Edwards' life "as he might have told it."
On his blog on 28 May 2010, Myers noted that Picador ran a Twitter
-based competition to win an advance bound proof copy of Richard, and that an advance bound proof copy of the novel had been put up for auction on eBay
.
's production company in Los Angeles got in touch to request a copy with a view to adapting it into a film. That wasn't a moment of joy though -- more one of mirth. Imagine a Hollywood version of a very Welsh story... well, it's unthinkable, isn't it?"
reportedly expressed cynicism towards Myers' book. In an interview in September 2010, Wire said, "I found it too upsetting to read. Richey was – is – a brother, a son, a friend." In another interview in the same month, Wire said, "I just feel it's better if I don't see [the novel]. It's a free country and it's not going to ruin our lives and in a pure fictional sense it may well have its worth. It's just the presumption that the writer kind of knew someone..." In a November 2010 interview, Wire described the premise of the book as “really presumptuous...It would be really pious and stupid to try and ban it because we grew up on rock 'n' roll mythology. I feel uncomfortable with it and it fills me with a bit of dread, but if I was 16 I'd probably look at reading it. But we're not happy with it.”
In an interview with the BBC in September 2010, Ben Myers said that he never expected the Manics to like the book, adding that "All I could have hoped for is that they could accept or appreciate what it is I'm trying to do. I have to accept anything the Manic Street Preachers say about it, but I think the comments that I've heard have been fair enough. Given some of the things Nicky Wire has said in the past about some people I think he's probably been quite charitable. It could have been far, far worse." Myers also said that he had written to the Edwards family, explaining why he wrote the book and "a little bit about myself and about the influence their son had on me and people like me," and sent a similar letter to the Manics.
The Times review claims that "Myers is finest when relating the mechanics of life in and around a rock band; never once is there a dropped beat. He understands the reactionary nature of the post-punk diktat, the people it attracts and its importance to lives given up to it." The review also descrives Richard as an "excellent book," and in its "most arresting of sections, Myers draws on all his journalistic skill and fan-boy credentials to give a realistic account of Edward's final days...Myers deserves credit not only for adding a third dimension to Edwards, but for trying a fourth, for attempting to document a period of his life that seems destined to remain a mystery, but could explain much about his complex character...Maybe, thanks to this book, [Edwards] is at last getting something he deserves - an insight into his personal conflicts, his efforts to maintain wellbeing and his desire to do the right thing."
Mojo describes Richard as "a work of fiction that bears a convincing ring of truth...This nuanced portrait of Edwards, explores the band's rise, the Richey myth, and the pain that fuelled his alienation anorexia and self-harm," and the New Humanist describes Ben Myers as "a sensitive, thoughtful writer...His greatest skill is the atmospheric evocation of landscape and place."
According to Marie Claire magazine, “Myer's recreation of Edward's life is sensitively handled - an exploration of a troubled, articulate man who was shy and withdrawn.”
Time Out writes that “Richard is not a provocation, nor does it claim to solve the Richey mystery. It is a sympathetic and sad imagining of the boy who became a reluctant pop idol before that notion became oxymoronic.” bookmunch.com has described Richard as "a novel for our celebrity-obsessed age, a thorough investigation - written in beautiful prose - of a young man suicided or disappeared by society. From life in a small town to sex, drugs and rock and roll excess, Ben Myers' Richard slashes and burns
its way through the bloated beigeness of the contemporary British novel." The review by 3:am review claims that "What is sure is Myers' skill for storytelling; the absence of any cynicism, a certain hypnotic meditative pace he successfully employs that draws you in as the novel progresses and a mood of melancholic nostalgia, a tantalising nostalgia for a time not long passed but gone forever, before social networking and mobile phones, when NME
was samizdat and music, art, culture were things you risked getting your head kicked in for. And a nostalgia for places and people, of course, who are no longer here."
Marilyn Roxie, for the website A Future in Noise, describes Richard as “a novel that, while imperfect, largely works as both a tribute to an iconic figure and an analysis of a talented, intelligent individual with real problems.”
Reviewing the novel for The Independent, Jonathan Gibbs writes that “there's no escaping the fact that the writing is, considering its subject, bizarrely insipid...You can't imagine Richey giving [this book] the time of day.”
The review in The Metro claims that “for all the objective merits of Myers’ writing, it’s hard not to find Richard: A Novel rather repulsive. Fictional stories about real people are not new but taking so much artistic licence with a man only legally presumed dead in 2008 is distasteful.”
Terry Staunton of Record Collector writes that "There’s an element of macabre tabloid sleaze to [Myers'] conjecture, and some awkward amateur psychoanalysis attempting to identify the demons that led to Richey going AWOL. Equally contentious are the flashback sequences, differentiated here by itallics, charting Edwards’ rise and fall, which clearly take liberties with the subject’s innermost thoughts...Nicky Wire has already expressed the band’s unhappiness with the book, and several thousand diehard Manics fans may soon be joining the chorus of disapproval."http://www.recordcollectormag.com/reviews/review-detail/6412
Reviewing Richard, Paul Owen of The Guardian writes that “It seems a cheap criticism to say that a former music journalist falls back too frequently on the style of the indie press, but unfortunately that is the case here...Banality and lack of imagination mar the text...Myers deploys frequent paragraph breaks and short, solemn sentences in an attempt to imbue the text with gravitas, a device overused to the point of self-parody. The book is also poorly edited, adding to an overall impression of sloppiness.” Owen goes on to say that “Myers tries to interpret Edwards's depression, eating disorders and self-harm, key components of his cult status and crucial precursors of his decision to disappear. The trouble is that the real Richey wrote about these things far more memorably and distinctively himself, most notably on his final album with the Manics, The Holy Bible
...Set against this existing body of work, the task Myers has set himself seems somewhat pointless...it is hard to escape the feeling that this is less a novel than a music biography written in the first and second person.”
phones Richey and asks him if he wants to accompany him to the Queensway Cinema in London to see either Braveheart
or Batman Forever
. This conversation takes place on 31 January 1995; however, Batman Forever was not released to UK cinemas until July 1995, and Braveheart was not released to UK cinemas until September 1995.
Ben Myers
Ben Myers is an English writer.His first novel The Book Of Fuck, a fictionalised account about a hapless music journalist, was published to underground acclaim in 2004 through Wrecking Ball Press. Myers claimed it was written in six days "as a joke"...
about Richey Edwards, the former rhythm guitarist and co-lyricist of the Welsh alternative rock
Alternative rock
Alternative rock is a genre of rock music and a term used to describe a diverse musical movement that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1980s and became widely popular by the 1990s...
band Manic Street Preachers
Manic Street Preachers
Manic Street Preachers are a Welsh alternative rock band, formed in 1986. They are James Dean Bradfield, Nicky Wire, Richey Edwards and Sean Moore. The band are part of the Cardiff music scene, and were at their most prominent during the 1990s...
. Edwards - who suffered from depression, alcoholism
Alcoholism
Alcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol, and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships, and social standing...
, anorexia
Anorexia nervosa
Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by refusal to maintain a healthy body weight and an obsessive fear of gaining weight. Although commonly called "anorexia", that term on its own denotes any symptomatic loss of appetite and is not strictly accurate...
and self-harm
Self-harm
Self-harm or deliberate self-harm includes self-injury and self-poisoning and is defined as the intentional, direct injuring of body tissue most often done without suicidal intentions. These terms are used in the more recent literature in an attempt to reach a more neutral terminology...
- disappeared on 1 February 1995 at the age of 27
27 Club
The 27 Club—also occasionally known as the Forever 27 Club, Club 27 or the Curse of 27—is the title for a group of popular musicians who all died at the age of 27...
and was declared officially presumed dead on 23 November 2008. Richard was published by Picador
Picador
A picador is one of the pair of horsemen in a Spanish bullfight that jab the bull with a lance. They perform in the tercio de varas which is the first of the three stages in a Spanish bullfight.The picador has three main functions:...
and was released on 1 October 2010 (several days after the release of the tenth Manic Street Preachers studio album, Postcards From a Young Man
Postcards From a Young Man
Postcards from a Young Man is the tenth studio album by the alternative rock band Manic Street Preachers, which reached the number 3 spot on the UK Charts. The Manics began recording the album in October 2009 at their Faster Studio in Cardiff...
). It is Myers' second novel, and purports to be a fictionalised account of Richey Edwards' life "as he might have told it."
On his blog on 28 May 2010, Myers noted that Picador ran a Twitter
Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
-based competition to win an advance bound proof copy of Richard, and that an advance bound proof copy of the novel had been put up for auction on eBay
EBay
eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...
.
Plot
Richard comprises two narratives. One is from Richey's first-person point-of-view, beginning with his departure from his London Hotel on 1 February 1995, and covering his thoughts, movements and encounters from this point onwards. The second narrative strand is a second-person point-of-view, running through Richey's childhood, school, university, career with the Manic Street Preachers, and physical/emotional breakdown. This second narrative strand eventually reaches the point at which the first narrative strand began, converging both narratives.Background
In an interview in May 2010, Myers said, "I wrote this book for people who have never heard of Richey Edwards, and I thought his story was one that had not been told in a manner befitting his life ... I wanted to get beyond that false perception and tell the story of an intelligent young academic from a good home with good friends around him who became the most engaging British rock star of his era. To do that I felt that fiction was the best medium. I don’t purport Richard to be the absolute truth, but rather a version of it." Myers also said that although he never met Edwards, he "shared many mutual friends or acquaintances with him ... I hope the book is sensitively handled. I also spent months researching it too, so factually it’s pretty tight, I think." According to Myers, the book's first draft took six months to write, and went through another six to nine months of edits between himself and his editor at Picador. Myers also said that "many months before the book was even published, Brad PittBrad Pitt
William Bradley "Brad" Pitt is an American actor and film producer. Pitt has received two Academy Award nominations and four Golden Globe Award nominations, winning one...
's production company in Los Angeles got in touch to request a copy with a view to adapting it into a film. That wasn't a moment of joy though -- more one of mirth. Imagine a Hollywood version of a very Welsh story... well, it's unthinkable, isn't it?"
Response from the Manic Street Preachers
Manic Street Preachers bassist/lyricist Nicky WireNicky Wire
Nicholas Allen Jones, known as Nicky Wire, is the lyricist, bassist and occasional vocalist with the Welsh rock band Manic Street Preachers.-Early life:...
reportedly expressed cynicism towards Myers' book. In an interview in September 2010, Wire said, "I found it too upsetting to read. Richey was – is – a brother, a son, a friend." In another interview in the same month, Wire said, "I just feel it's better if I don't see [the novel]. It's a free country and it's not going to ruin our lives and in a pure fictional sense it may well have its worth. It's just the presumption that the writer kind of knew someone..." In a November 2010 interview, Wire described the premise of the book as “really presumptuous...It would be really pious and stupid to try and ban it because we grew up on rock 'n' roll mythology. I feel uncomfortable with it and it fills me with a bit of dread, but if I was 16 I'd probably look at reading it. But we're not happy with it.”
In an interview with the BBC in September 2010, Ben Myers said that he never expected the Manics to like the book, adding that "All I could have hoped for is that they could accept or appreciate what it is I'm trying to do. I have to accept anything the Manic Street Preachers say about it, but I think the comments that I've heard have been fair enough. Given some of the things Nicky Wire has said in the past about some people I think he's probably been quite charitable. It could have been far, far worse." Myers also said that he had written to the Edwards family, explaining why he wrote the book and "a little bit about myself and about the influence their son had on me and people like me," and sent a similar letter to the Manics.
Critical response
Upon its release, Richard has received mixed to positive reviews.The Times review claims that "Myers is finest when relating the mechanics of life in and around a rock band; never once is there a dropped beat. He understands the reactionary nature of the post-punk diktat, the people it attracts and its importance to lives given up to it." The review also descrives Richard as an "excellent book," and in its "most arresting of sections, Myers draws on all his journalistic skill and fan-boy credentials to give a realistic account of Edward's final days...Myers deserves credit not only for adding a third dimension to Edwards, but for trying a fourth, for attempting to document a period of his life that seems destined to remain a mystery, but could explain much about his complex character...Maybe, thanks to this book, [Edwards] is at last getting something he deserves - an insight into his personal conflicts, his efforts to maintain wellbeing and his desire to do the right thing."
Mojo describes Richard as "a work of fiction that bears a convincing ring of truth...This nuanced portrait of Edwards, explores the band's rise, the Richey myth, and the pain that fuelled his alienation anorexia and self-harm," and the New Humanist describes Ben Myers as "a sensitive, thoughtful writer...His greatest skill is the atmospheric evocation of landscape and place."
According to Marie Claire magazine, “Myer's recreation of Edward's life is sensitively handled - an exploration of a troubled, articulate man who was shy and withdrawn.”
Time Out writes that “Richard is not a provocation, nor does it claim to solve the Richey mystery. It is a sympathetic and sad imagining of the boy who became a reluctant pop idol before that notion became oxymoronic.” bookmunch.com has described Richard as "a novel for our celebrity-obsessed age, a thorough investigation - written in beautiful prose - of a young man suicided or disappeared by society. From life in a small town to sex, drugs and rock and roll excess, Ben Myers' Richard slashes and burns
Slash 'N' Burn
"Slash 'n' Burn" was released by the Welsh rock band Manic Street Preachers on March 16, 1992 and was the fourth single to be released from the band's debut album, Generation Terrorists....
its way through the bloated beigeness of the contemporary British novel." The review by 3:am review claims that "What is sure is Myers' skill for storytelling; the absence of any cynicism, a certain hypnotic meditative pace he successfully employs that draws you in as the novel progresses and a mood of melancholic nostalgia, a tantalising nostalgia for a time not long passed but gone forever, before social networking and mobile phones, when NME
NME
The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...
was samizdat and music, art, culture were things you risked getting your head kicked in for. And a nostalgia for places and people, of course, who are no longer here."
Marilyn Roxie, for the website A Future in Noise, describes Richard as “a novel that, while imperfect, largely works as both a tribute to an iconic figure and an analysis of a talented, intelligent individual with real problems.”
Reviewing the novel for The Independent, Jonathan Gibbs writes that “there's no escaping the fact that the writing is, considering its subject, bizarrely insipid...You can't imagine Richey giving [this book] the time of day.”
The review in The Metro claims that “for all the objective merits of Myers’ writing, it’s hard not to find Richard: A Novel rather repulsive. Fictional stories about real people are not new but taking so much artistic licence with a man only legally presumed dead in 2008 is distasteful.”
Terry Staunton of Record Collector writes that "There’s an element of macabre tabloid sleaze to [Myers'] conjecture, and some awkward amateur psychoanalysis attempting to identify the demons that led to Richey going AWOL. Equally contentious are the flashback sequences, differentiated here by itallics, charting Edwards’ rise and fall, which clearly take liberties with the subject’s innermost thoughts...Nicky Wire has already expressed the band’s unhappiness with the book, and several thousand diehard Manics fans may soon be joining the chorus of disapproval."http://www.recordcollectormag.com/reviews/review-detail/6412
Reviewing Richard, Paul Owen of The Guardian writes that “It seems a cheap criticism to say that a former music journalist falls back too frequently on the style of the indie press, but unfortunately that is the case here...Banality and lack of imagination mar the text...Myers deploys frequent paragraph breaks and short, solemn sentences in an attempt to imbue the text with gravitas, a device overused to the point of self-parody. The book is also poorly edited, adding to an overall impression of sloppiness.” Owen goes on to say that “Myers tries to interpret Edwards's depression, eating disorders and self-harm, key components of his cult status and crucial precursors of his decision to disappear. The trouble is that the real Richey wrote about these things far more memorably and distinctively himself, most notably on his final album with the Manics, The Holy Bible
The Holy Bible (album)
The Holy Bible is the third studio album by Welsh alternative rock band Manic Street Preachers. It was released on 29 August 1994 by Epic Records and was the last of the band's albums released before the disappearance of lyricist and guitarist Richey Edwards , on 1 February 1995.Edwards was...
...Set against this existing body of work, the task Myers has set himself seems somewhat pointless...it is hard to escape the feeling that this is less a novel than a music biography written in the first and second person.”
Inaccuracies
In Myers’ account of the day before Richey’s disappearance, Manic Street Preachers guitarist/singer James Dean BradfieldJames Dean Bradfield
James Dean Bradfield is the lead guitarist and vocalist for the Welsh rock band Manic Street Preachers.- Early life :...
phones Richey and asks him if he wants to accompany him to the Queensway Cinema in London to see either Braveheart
Braveheart
Braveheart is a 1995 epic historical drama war film directed by and starring Mel Gibson. The film was written for the screen and then novelized by Randall Wallace...
or Batman Forever
Batman Forever
Batman Forever is a 1995 American superhero film directed by Joel Schumacher and produced by Tim Burton. Based on the DC Comics character Batman, the film is a sequel to Batman Returns , with Val Kilmer replacing Michael Keaton as Batman...
. This conversation takes place on 31 January 1995; however, Batman Forever was not released to UK cinemas until July 1995, and Braveheart was not released to UK cinemas until September 1995.